Felix King foundation empowers 150 widows to run SMEs

Felix King Charity Foundation has empowered about one hundred and fifty widows to owned and run their own Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) with in a project called “Widow Go Start a Business Scheme”.

Speaking during the maiden celebration of the International Widows Day Conference in Sheraton Hotel, Lagos, the convener and founder of the foundation, Mr. Felix King affirmed that he decided to ameliorate the plights of the widows due to the difficulties he faced ten years ago in trying to save the life of his daughter in the hospital.

“If i found it difficult then, how would those widows survive without anyone helping them adding,” King said, adding that the conference was meant to create awareness about the plights of the widows and provide the needed assistance that they need to survive.

“This conference is a vital step in promoting the rights of the widows worldwide. According to UN Secretary General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon in his 2016 general message said that there are about 245 million widows around the world, and nearly half are living in abject poverty.

“There are 8millions widows in Nigeria and stigmatizing them and women generally is very wrong. You can’t hold a woman responsible for the death of her husband and by doing this, the society further exposes her and her children to hardship,” the philanthropist said.

King pointed out that in Nigeria today widows are subjected to all manner of inhuman treatments under the guise of customs and traditions, and he called for the eradication of such practices stressing that the foundation was set up to help the widows stand up for their rights.

On the scheme itself, the founder said “This scheme is not a loan, we have 150 women benefitting from this scheme, we are just doing our best to help the widows in our community including providing shelter for them.”
Meanwhile, Speaker of Edo State House of Assembly, Mrs. Ativie, who was a guest at the event, expressed worry out that despite the fact that there are laws protecting the widows, people still flout the laws.

She said “We have the laws but the problem is that these women will not go and complain and because of this, people still hide under the guise of tradition and disobey these laws. The first contact often discourage the women to report and they will kill the case.

“By the time we have several people going to jail for discriminating against widows and women generally, people will stay away from punishing the women under the cover of tradition,” Hon. Ativie affirmed.

According to her, it is a breach of Section 42 sub-section 1 & 2 of the Nigerian constitution which guarantees the right to freedom from discrimination for all Nigerians, including women. This runs contrary to the customary law of the Igbos that a female child does not have right to her father’s inheritance.

“Edo State government have embarked on programmes that is aimed at advancing the course of the widows and helping them set up SMEs to survive their families. We are giving scholarship to their children, we train them through skill acquisition programmes and even go as far as creating a family court in the state which emanated from the child’s rights law”Hon. Ativie affirmed.

The high point of the event was the launching of the widow start-up scheme “Widow Go Start a Business Scheme”.